City studying ways to get more New Yorkers on commuter rail lines

Department of Transportation seeking to relieve pressure on the subway

The city’s Department of Transportation is studying ways to get more New Yorkers to use commuter rail lines and take pressure off of the beleaguered subway system, public documents show.

The department has tapped engineering firm AECOM to look at potential changes that would boost ridership on Long Island Rail Road and Metro North lines running within the five boroughs.

Reducing fares within city limits, for example, would entice more residents to use commuter rails like the subway system and connect more neighborhoods to transit hubs like Grand Central Terminal and Penn Station in Manhattan, Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn and Jamaica and Woodside stations in Queens.

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“AECOM is under contract to … investigate service and policy strategies for the city zone of the commuter rail network to connect residents to more frequent and affordable regional rail service, and potentially reduce crowding on nearby subway lines,” a spokesman for the department said in a statement.

In particular, the de Blasio administration has floated the idea of running trains more frequently between Atlantic Terminal and Jamaica Station so Queens commuters could then transfer to a number of subway lines at the Brooklyn hub.

The agency and the Economic Development Corp. are jointly spending around $787,000 on the study, which began in January and will end in October. The initiative grew out of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s 2015 OneNYC plan, which also supports the state’s idea of building several new Metro North stations in the Bronx.

Any changes to commuter rail networks would need to be made by the state Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which is facing an avalanche of criticism for its mismanagement of the city’s subway system. As this story was going to press, the Long Island Rail Road announced that a broken rail had temporarily knocked out all service between Jamaica Station and Atlantic Terminal.